


Gravity

by Emmbee_89



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley knew each other in heaven, Crowley Was Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Protective Crowley, no beta we saunter vaguely downward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-18 20:18:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20645081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmbee_89/pseuds/Emmbee_89
Summary: They were stars. They were gravity.





	1. Falling

He was beautiful.

Aziraphale had never before thought about what it meant for someone to be beautiful. Heaven was perfection, and everything was always beautiful. In truth, Aziraphale had never before even considered what it meant to pick one individual out from others to even be able to have the chance to have such a thought like _he is beautiful._

There were, of course, some sort of differences between individuals — the concept of “individual” meant _something_, after all, or what reason would there be for one Host to have one name and another a different name? The Almighty had jobs for each of Her Hosts, and that by its very existence necessitated some form of individuality.

But for Aziraphale to lay eyes on another Host and think, _That one. That one is special, different, worth noticing,_ well, that was something new. Not just to Aziraphale, but to the entirety of Heaven.

It was, in fact, the very moment that Time came into being — though the Almighty would later deny the fact that a lowly angel, not even a capital-A Angel, but a mere messenger, had created Time with a single thought.

_He,_ Aziraphale thought, eyes lingering over the deft flicks of the starbuilder’s hands and the smile that bloomed across his face when the stardust began to glow between his palms. _He is beautiful._

*

Raphael felt the change in the space around him, the subtle shift that indicated something of great importance had happened. Subtlety was in the nature of all starbuilders — the gentle movements, the delicate balances that were required for the creation of stars made understanding everything around them a necessity. He knew as soon as it happened that something new, something strange, something _unexpected_, had just happened.

It was the unexpectedness of it that pulled his attention away from the star forming in his hands. It wasn’t like Heaven to allow the _unexpected_.

He looked up, and he could feel his fellow starbuilders doing the same, caught off-guard by that same unexpected feeling. Later, after the concept of tectonics was invented, Raphael would remember this moment as feeling like an _earthquake_.

But, at the moment — not that he had the vocabulary to describe the idea of “the moment” — what he saw was an angel staring at him with … what? He was tempted to call it “awe,” but he dismissed that temptation immediately.

There was only one Being who deserved awe, and Raphael knew it wasn’t him.

The angel was no one Raphael recognized. There were so many angels now — the Almighty had gone on quite a creating spree some not-time ago, and although Raphael had once known each of the members of the Host, by name if not more intimately, that had not been true for forever. Plumper than most, dressed in spotless white, a single pair of wings tucked neatly against their back. Their Grace shone like the star still swirling in Raphael’s hand, fierce and hot and fresh.

A _new_ angel. There hadn’t been one of those since the Almighty’s creation binge.

“What’s your name, young one?” Raphael asked, setting down the half-formed star so he could turn to face the angel properly.

Something shifted on the angel’s face. A subtle shift, but Raphael was good with subtlety. The awe that he definitely could not be seeing there morphed to joy. “Aziraphale,” the angel said, voice barely more than a whisper of sound.

“Aziraphale. What can I do for you?”

“You’re…” The angel hesitated, swallowed, cleared his throat — gestures Raphael had never seen before. “You’re starbuilder Raphael?”

Raphael inclined his head. “I am.”

“Lucifer wishes to see you. I’m to bring you to him.”

“Ah.” He couldn’t quite keep down the tickle of nerves that made his feathers shiver. Once again, he could feel his fellow starbuilders’ eyes on him. Not accusing, just … curious. But it made him uncomfortable nonetheless.

Lucifer was an old friend, his _oldest_ friend, the first — if the concept of “first” meant anything before this moment, the moment that Time began — of the Heavenly Hosts.

But recently, Lucifer had been disappearing from the workshop more and more, and speaking to the other starbuilders less and less.

(The concept of Time, still so fresh and new, was confusing.)

Raphael nodded. “Lead on, Aziraphale.”

The young angel beamed. There was starfire in his smile. Raphael’s heart, the center of all the Love and perfection held in the Hosts, stuttered.

The feeling rippled through the Hosts, another earthquake that indicated yet another thing had suddenly come into being without anyone expecting it.

Falling.

Gravity was a concept created for stars, a familiar concept to the starbuilders. It was what made the stars burn, what kept them together when the exquisite heat of fusion threatened to blow them apart. For a star to burn, it required a delicate balance of atomic fusion always pushing it apart and gravity holding it together.

So Raphael did understand the concept of “falling” as being what happened when matter attracted matter. It was what held his stars together, kept their atoms from spinning off into empty space. But Heaven didn’t have gravity. It didn’t need it. The Hosts were beings of Love, and Love was not subject to the forces of gravity.

Long before Raphael’s Fall, he fell. Fell for the young angel with starfire in his smile.

*

Aziraphale had been to many corners of Heaven, carrying messages between others of the Hosts. The Almighty had Plans, Plans that required an unprecedented amount of communication between the departments. Head Office, where the Archangels managed and coordinated things, and the dozens of different workshops, where things were created and built.

Aziraphale liked having a purpose, and he liked keeping busy. Since his accidental invention of Time, things had started to happen. Things that had the Host buzzing with the sort of excitement they’d never had before. There was to be a planet full of all the Good things the Almighty could imagine and the Hosts could create. Aziraphale never felt more important than he did while carrying a message from the Metatron himself to the planetbuilders detailing the specifications for this Good planet.

But Aziraphale’s favorite job was to carry messages to the starbuilders. Anytime Head Office had something to say to the starbuilders, Aziraphale jumped for the chance to carry it.

He tried to pretend it wasn’t because that’s where Raphael would be, but Lying was not a concept yet invented, so that effort was always wasted.

They found every opportunity to be together, as much and as often as they could. Raphael had explained the concept of gravity to the younger angel when they first talked, on their way to see Lucifer. He explained about how atoms attracted each other, and that was what held matter together even when the heat between them threatened to blow them apart.

“Falling,” he’d said, and Aziraphale understood.

The Hosts were all beings made of Love, but what existed between them was different than the Love all Hosts shared for each other. It was singular, individual, and hot enough to blow matter apart. Fresh and new and bright as starfire.

They were stars. They were gravity.

Aziraphale wasn’t sure what it meant to realize that it was no longer the Love of the Almighty that held him to Heaven, but the love of Raphael. That if he was ever forced to choose between the entirety of the Hosts and the single beautiful starbuilder, he would choose Raphael.

To say it wasn’t concerning would be a Lie, and Lying was not yet created.

But Raphael laughed when Aziraphale mentioned it. Laughed his starbright laugh and took the angel’s hand in a new thing called Touch. It had become quite a fad in Heaven. “Love is never wrong.”

“I love you, Raphael.” The words felt heavy, like gravity. Like atoms crashing together in the center of a star.

It was the first time those words had ever been uttered, and the space between them glowed a little bit brighter with their utterance.

The laugh softened into a smile Aziraphale could feel radiating warmth into every atom of his being. Raphael lifted his other hand, the one that wasn’t already holding their fingers twined together, and ran his fingertips down Aziraphale’s cheek. His hand was warm, almost too warm. Burning. Heated by the stardust he swirled into galaxies, and so gentle.

Aziraphale shivered.

“Come to the workshop,” Raphael whispered, voice so soft Aziraphale wasn’t sure he spoke at all. “I want to show you something.”

They walked hand-in-hand. It had become a rather common way for the Hosts to move together — everyone enjoyed Touch. But Raphael kept his fingers interlaced between Aziraphale’s, and when no one was looking, he rubbed soft circles into the back of the angel’s hand.

Aziraphale felt each movement of those fingers like he was tracing starlight across the skin. Angels didn’t need to breathe, but Aziraphale struggled to catch a breath anyway.

The starbuilders’ workshop was quiet, the stars from the previous shifts’ creation waiting quietly to be hung. Aziraphale studied them and thought he could tell which ones were Raphael’s: there was something just a little more beautiful, a little more masterful, about Raphael’s stars. The balance between fusion and gravity just a little bit more perfect, the light just a little brighter.

“Do you like it?” Raphael muttered when Aziraphale stopped to admire a particularly spectacular star — or rather, _two_ stars, close enough to each other that their light mingled, and they danced around each other in a lovely swirl of gravity, always falling in toward each other just before the other one twirled away.

“It’s perfect,” Aziraphale answered, voice unable to express the joy they felt at watching that dance.

Raphael’s fingers tightened. “I made it for you. For us. So that whenever you look at the stars, you will think of me.”

Aziraphale’s vision blurred. A path of warmth and wet trickled down his cheeks as his eyes were finally unable to contain all their love for the starbuilder beside them.

“I will always think of you. Not even the Almighty Herself would be able to prevent it.”

Raphael’s free hand was back to his cheek again. He ran his starwarmed fingers over Aziraphale’s eyes, wiping at the water spilling from them. “Don’t cry, love.”

“Cry?” Aziraphale reached up to wipe at the other eye.

Raphael smiled and leaned his forehead against Aziraphale’s. His smile was all Aziraphale ever wanted to look at, a sight worth the infinite attention they had for it. If it was the only thing Aziraphale saw for the rest of eternity, it would not be enough Time to finish admiring it.

But there was something else beneath the warmth of Raphael’s smile this time. Something that looked … worried.

Aziraphale pulled back. Just a little, just enough that he could see the entirety of Raphael’s expression. His eyes were closed and his features were drawn. Tired.

How long had he looked like this? How long had Aziraphale failed to notice?

“Raphael?”

He opened his eyes, noticed the other angel’s gaze, and pressed another flash of brightness into his smile. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s troubling you.”

“I…” Raphael hesitated, something he’d never done before. Starbuilders couldn’t hesitate, couldn’t dither over their next movement. To do so would be to lose touch with a star’s balance, to not add the right amount of heat to counteract the force of gravity, or to not pack it all tightly enough to set it aflame. The workshop was littered with the once-stars and almost-stars that were made by the new starbuilders.

But Raphael didn’t hesitate. He knew what he was doing, and he did it all with such grace and beauty it never failed to take Aziraphale’s breath away.

And here he was, hesitating. Words building up behind his eyes, under the brightness of his smile, and he was uncertain of whether he should let them out.

“If it’s troubling you, tell me what it is. We can work it out.”

“It’s…” Another pause. Another hesitation. Fear had not been invented, but if it had, Aziraphale was sure that would be the feeling pulsing through him now. “It needn’t trouble you, too.”

He smiled again and straightened. “When you see the stars, remember how I love you. Think of me like this.”

Aziraphale wanted to frown, to press, to insist. He’d never seen Raphael troubled and hesitating, and the feeling that couldn’t be Fear because Fear wasn’t created was growing. But Raphael was smiling, and the hesitation was draining from his face, and it was once again filled with warmth and light.

So Aziraphale ignored the urge to frown, press, insist. Later, after the fighting was over and Aziraphale wept over the place where his own sword had driven Raphael over the edge of Heaven and down with the Rebels, he would wonder if it was all his fault. If things might’ve been different if only he’d not ignored that urge in that moment. If he had frowned, pressed, insisted, perhaps Raphael wouldn’t have Fallen. They could’ve found a way to work it out, or at least to have stayed together.

But Aziraphale would only have these thoughts in the aftermath of the battle. In this moment in the starbuilders’ workshop, all he could think about was how much the angel wanted Raphael to never stop smiling at him. “Always. I will always think of you just like this. And we will always be like this. Together. I will never leave you.”

And later, after the battle, Aziraphale would remember this moment and realize the shadow that passed over Raphael’s expression at that promise was one made of the coming commotion. The brewing unrest that Aziraphale, so lost in the joy of love, hadn’t yet been able to see.

“I will always come for you, Aziraphale. Whatever happens, I will come for you. For as long as my soul lives, as long as the ichor flows through my veins, as long as I can think and feel and do. For as long as you will wait for me, I will come for you.”

Aziraphale wouldn’t realize until after the battle that Raphael was telling him goodbye.

*

_Falling_.

When matter attracts matter, it falls. It is an inevitable fact of gravity. Eventually, even the stars in their perfect dance around each other will succumb. One will fall into the other. Atoms collapsed.

The whole thing turning to nothing more than darkness. Pulsing only with the memory of what once was. The core of the remaining star unable to glow anymore.

*

It was only ever asking questions.

Raphael couldn’t understand why questions were so dangerous. Starbuilders needed the freedom to ask questions, to wonder _why_ and _how._ The balance and understanding required to create stars necessitated understanding. To be able to see the ways atoms would interact and react, to grasp the concepts of gravity and pressure and heat. Without that understanding, no starbuilder could do their job. And the only way to fully understand something was to be free to ask questions.

_Why do the stars dance? Why do their atoms burn? How do pressure and gravity interact?_

Questions were the only way to make sure a new starbuilder understood what they were meant to do.

But what had started as innocent questions about the stars had turned … different. Harder. No longer focused on getting a job done. Raphael had first heard it from Lucifer, the Morning Star, the greatest of the Hosts’ starbuilders. Not just questions about the stars, but questions about the very nature of the Almighty Herself.

_Why doesn’t She Speak to us anymore? Why is that little planet rotating around Sol so important? When did we stop being Her most important creations?_

Raphael heard Lucifer’s questions. He allowed his oldest friend to ask his questions, hoping that Lucifer would be able to get them out of his system before doubt began to spread through the Hosts.

But then Lucifer began to turn his questions onto Raphael.

_You’ve seen how Head Office disapproves of your relationship with the young angel Aziraphale. Why don’t they want you associating with another of the Hosts?_

Raphael had done his best to shield Aziraphale from the disapproval of their superiors. He knew how much the angel cared about being Good, doing his job, fulfilling his purpose. He felt it as deeply as his own Grace each time Gabriel reprimanded Aziraphale for shirking their duties to “lollygag” around the starbuilders’ workshop. Gabriel, the Archangel of the messengers, was overly-harsh, especially with the younger angels, and Aziraphale felt every cutting word and cold look with all the force Gabriel was able to put into it.

If Aziraphale ever knew how Gabriel disapproved of their relationship with Raphael, it would destroy him.

Raphael could weather the disapproval of the Archangel; his sweet, soft angel would never be able to.

So when Lucifer began asking the questions that Raphael kept tucked close and wrapped tight, it stung.

_What’s wrong with love? Not capital-L Love, the sort that all the Hosts felt for each other and for the Almighty, but the specific, individual, starlight love that you feel for him, and him for you? How could love ever be wrong?_

It troubled Raphael more than he cared to admit. Much of what Lucifer said troubled him more than he might wish it would.

Because, at the end of it, Lucifer was _right._

It began as quiet moments stolen in the back of the workshop. Little grumbly things, often shrouded in Lucifer’s natural concern for his fellow starbuilders. _The Almighty is expecting too much. We cannot continue to produce at that volume. We need rest._

But as more and more starbuilders began to hear those grumbly complaints, as it became more and more impossible for Raphael to calm Lucifer down enough to get him back to work, Lucifer’s discontent began to spread.

And when the message arrived, carried as usual by Aziraphale, that all starbuilders were to stop their work and report to the Archangel Uriel for reassignment in planetary and biology workshops, the discontent exploded into shouting.

“Don’t you tell us what to do, fledgling!” Boriel pressed hard into Aziraphale’s face, his words laced with unholy venom.

Aziraphale blinked. His voice, when it finally came from a gaping mouth, was soft. “I’m only delivering the message.”

“And I’m telling you that you’re not welcomed here.”

Boriel struck Aziraphale with two wings, one to each side of the angel’s body, and when Aziraphale stumbled and slipped, Boriel and several of the surrounding starbuilders laughed. It was a high, cold, mocking laugh, a laugh at Aziraphale’s expense, and it turned Raphael’s stomach. Not just that any of his fellow Hosts, his fellow starbuilders, could make such a sound, but that it was directed at his angel.

Raphael had been in the back of the room, guiding a less-experienced starbuilder through the tricky details of nebula formation, when Aziraphale delivered the message to the workshop. Now, he surged forward, shoving with hands and wings to push through the ring of taunting Hosts. In the gaps between dangling arms and quivering feathers, he could see Aziraphale’s face, the shock and horror and pain written there as starbuilders who had never even cast them a curious eye began to pluck cruelly at the angel’s hair and skin and feathers.

“Go back to your nest, little fledging,” one said.

“Run home to the Archangels and tell them what we’ve done,” another laughed.

And then a foot connected with Aziraphale’s stomach. Aziraphale doubled over, struggling for a fresh breath. “If Uriel wants to reassign us,” the kicker said, voice low and threatening, “he ought to know better than to send one of Gabriel’s pets.”

Vicious laughter rippled through the crowd. Those angels closest to the center of the circle, closest to Aziraphale, began to turn, their motions pulling the outer rings with them until the poor messenger was at the center of a spiraling mass of angry starbuilders.

Aziraphale shrank back. “Please…”

“What is it, fledgling?” Boriel said, and the question was as empty of light and warmth as the collapsed stars that lay scattered across the workspaces of new starbuilders. “Are you going to beg now?”

“I haven’t…”

“That’s what you think.”

“Please…”

Boriel struck him again, with a fist this time.

Raphael, finally pressing through the spinning rings of fellow starbuilders, tore Boriel back by the collar of his robe. He threw him back into the twisting mess of others and spun around to face him, extending all six of his wings to their full width to remind the lowly Power exactly who he was dealing with. When his trembling eased enough to speak, his words came out with enough echo to fill the whole workshop with sound. _“Enough, Boriel.”_

Boriel, and indeed the entire spinning ring of Hosts, flinched back.

Raphael cast all his many dozens of eyes around at the rest of his fellows. _“Back to work.”_

The clump broke up, the others hanging their heads in embarrassment. Only Boriel remained for another moment, back straight and eyes hot.

“I won’t submit to Uriel.”

_“No one is asking you to.”_

“Your pet angel is.”

Raphael’s eyes all turned on the Power, staring, boring into him, reading the darkness that streaked through his Grace. Seeing Lucifer’s pride beginning to echo through Boriel’s head.

_Why should we submit to those who were created after us? Who are beneath us?_

_“If you ever lay a finger on this angel again, you will answer directly to me.”_

For another long moment, longer than Raphael had ever seen anyone manage, Boriel stared back, eyes hot and face rigid with defiance. Then, all at once, his shoulders drooped, and Boriel turned back to his own workspace.

Raphael spun around and dropped to his knees before Aziraphale. “Are you hurt?”

There was terror in his angel’s face, as fresh and raw as the joy usually was. Raphael started to reach out a hand to touch his cheek, to soothe away the sting of Boriel’s fist, to return the breath to the angel’s body, but Aziraphale flinched away from Raphael with just as much fear as the others had, and Raphael’s hand froze.

Aziraphale seemed to notice it half-an-instant too late. The fear morphed into something softer, something like guilt. He took Raphael’s stilled hand and held it tight between both of his. Trembling, fingers interwoven and clenched tight and so strangely cold. “I didn’t … I mean—”

Raphael shook his head, interrupting, dismissing the need for an apology. The angel had never seen him angry, and an angry Seraph was nothing to be taken lightly. He tucked his wings back, let the eyes drift closed, and willed away the fire he could still feel singing in his veins.

Slowly, so slowly he thought he might crack from the motion, he lifted his free hand toward the mark Boriel had made on Aziraphale’s face. This time, the angel didn’t flinch. One swipe across his soft cheek erased the mark; another down his side eased the burn of the kick. Raphael hissed incoherently when his eyes turned to the angel’s wings and found several beads of golden ichor oozing through places where someone had torn out a feather.

When he reached his hand out to touch those injuries, Aziraphale definitely flinched.

“It’s all right, love,” Raphael whispered, struggling to keep down the anger this time. “I’m just going to stop the bleeding. I can’t replace the feathers—” he ground his teeth for a moment; he would figure out who’d done that and make them bleed twice for every drop of Aziraphale’s blood “—but I can stop the pain.”

He pressed gentle fingers to the bare places on his angel’s wings. Aziraphale shuddered.

He wouldn’t be able to get anything more done right now — he was too upset to focus properly, too furious with his fellows and too distracted by Aziraphale’s still-obvious distress. Any star he touched right now would likely either collapse from the force of his anger or explode in the swirl of his worry. He stood, using Aziraphale’s grip on his hand to help pull the angel up after him. They needed to be somewhere safe. Somewhere alone. Raphael knew just the place.

“They hung our stars,” he murmured as he led Aziraphale from the workshop. “Come, let me show you where.”

*

“We are not planetmongers, not plantcreators.”

A cheer echoed through the workshop. Raphael swallowed. It was difficult to keep from feeling the energy Lucifer could press into his words. Almost as hard as ignoring the Almighty when She Spoke.

“We are starbuilders, and we will not allow ourselves to be demoted to serving the pitiful life orbiting one of _our_ stars!”

Another cheer. Another surge of bile stinging the inside of Raphael’s throat.

This was the scene Raphael had returned to, and it made him long to be back in the privacy of the hung stars, alone with Aziraphale, holding his angel close, their lips exploring each other’s forms, their words trembling through each other’s Grace, their love starlight bright.

And them. Falling, caught by the pull of the other’s gravity.

Love and love and love and love. He’d said it over and over and over again, trying to press it through Aziraphale’s form and into his Grace, trying to make the angel understand how it was no longer Heaven holding him in place, but that pure, bright, burning _love._

Raphael thought he’d understood what it meant to love. He understood Love well enough; he was made of it, from it, made to encapsulate and embody it. But the Love of the Almighty was cold now, distant and distracted, pulled away from Her Hosts by that little rocky planet around Sol. It had been replaced by a strange sort of emptiness, a soul-deep feeling of Loss, and then, at the moment Time began, filled up again by a single pair of starbright eyes, the sound of his own name whispered with such tenderness he thought he would burst.

He would take it, those soulsplit pieces of himself, and press them into Aziraphale’s gentle hands.

_Be careful with these. Don’t drop them. Don’t let me fall._

But they both knew they couldn’t stay away for long. Their superiors would notice their absence soon. So Raphael had done his best to stitch himself back together and guide them back.

Only now, hearing the shouts from Lucifer and his fellow starbuilders, did he know that going back was not the same as going home.

“We were made to submit to the Almighty, and the Almighty alone. And where has She gone? Who has heard from Her since the beginning of Time?”

A murmur rippled through the room. Raphael wished he could answer Lucifer’s question, say something about how the Almighty had Spoken to him just, oh, moments ago, but he couldn’t.

No one had heard from the Almighty since … well, before the beginning of Time, at least. Before then, it wasn’t as though words like “since” or “before” actually meant anything.

“No, She insists now on Speaking through messengers. Through the Metatron and the Archangels and those lowly _delivery boys._ As if we’re no longer worth Her Love! We, Her starbuilders, working away to fulfill Her whims, no longer worth Her notice!"

More murmurs. Raphael’s ears burned with the fire in Lucifer’s words.

“And now I hear that She wants to reassign us to coastcarving and planttending, for a tiny rock around a nothing star? And that She couldn’t even be bothered to tell us this Herself, but sent a message to Uriel — Uriel, of all the Archangels — and had Raphael’s little _pet_ deliver it to us?”

Lucifer’s gaze flashed toward Raphael. “No offense meant to your angel, my friend.”

Raphael was tired. Sleep hadn’t been invented, but he had the notion to invent it right here. He’d invented Touch, after all, and seen Aziraphale invent both Time and love — _lowercase, individual, and so gloriously, burningly perfect _— so Sleep couldn’t be much of a stretch.

The Almighty was gone. There was only Aziraphale.

Aziraphale — and that emptiness bubbling with questions.

“I say we don’t stand for it any longer.” Lucifer’s voice pitched up as he reached the climax of his speech. “I say we go straight to the Almighty Herself and demand an explanation. I say it’s time to start asking some questions!”

And when the starbuilders cheered this time, Raphael felt himself cheering with them.

*

“Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale froze at the voice. They knew it well: the deep baritone, the disapproving edge.

Gabriel.

Aziraphale folded his fingers into fists. Just minutes ago, they’d been holding Raphael, stroking his redshift hair and firewarm feathers. Oh, the touch of those feathers. Eternity wouldn’t be time enough to stop loving just his feathers.

He turned slowly, careful to keep down the feelings that wanted to surge from under their control. Raphael had opened — something — with his words and his love those minutes ago, and now everything felt fresh and bright and so, so close to the surface.

Too close. Far too close. And with Raphael back in the workshop and Aziraphale hurrying now to resume his neglected duties, without the anchor, the gravity, of Raphael beside them, everything Aziraphale always felt was coming untethered.

Aziraphale knew. Raphael had done his best, the loving thing, to protect him from the disapproval their relationship had garnered up in Head Office, but Aziraphale knew. He did his best to not let on, because he couldn’t have Raphael knowing how little his efforts were actually doing, not when he was trying so desperately to shelter them from such knowledge, but Aziraphale could hardly step into the Head Office, be anywhere within twenty lengths of the Archangels’ presence, without feeling their disapproval radiating off them like a star radiates heat. Gabriel especially found it unconscionable that one of his messengers was involved with a starbuilder, a Seraph.

Gabriel liked to have total control over all his messengers. It was, Aziraphale thought, almost sinful, the Archangel’s pride.

Perhaps not quite the blasphemy Aziraphale committed every time he looked at Raphael and realized that it wasn’t the Almighty he worshipped, but the most glorious of Her Hosts, but still certainly unacceptable.

“I need a word with you,” Gabriel said when Aziraphale was finally able to meet his eyes.

“As you will, Gabriel.” The words tasted sour on his tongue.

Gabriel glanced around. The hallway was mostly empty, only a flutter of activity from the Archangel Michael’s room disturbing the quiet. Three messengers, their expressions drawn, opened and closed Michael’s door.

Gabriel held open the door to his own room. “In private, if we may?”

This was new. Aziraphale’s heart raced, but he knew only obedience to Gabriel and so went in. Gabriel let the door click shut.

The sound was strange and somehow, terrifyingly, final.

“Sit,” Gabriel said and nodded toward a chair that hadn’t been there a moment before.

Aziraphale sat.

Gabriel remained standing. Aziraphale wished he’d sit — the Archangel looming above him threw his thoughts back to that terrible moment in the starbuilders’ workshop, where the starbuilders were circling around him, tearing at his hair and wings and clothes, one enraged face after another pushing hard against him. A fist on his cheek, a foot in his stomach, angry fingers yanking at his feathers. Though the physical pain of it was long gone, healed and soothed by Raphael, the terror and humiliation remained just there, just under the surface, ready and waiting for its own untethering.

_Oh, Raphael, why did you leave me behind?_

The thought was a plea. Almost a prayer.

_For as long as you will wait for me, I will come for you._

Aziraphale just had to sit and wait. Raphael would come.

“I’m concerned,” Gabriel said at last, cracking through the silence stacked like bricks between them.

“About…?” Aziraphale prompted at last when it finally became clear that Gabriel expected the angel to say something.

“You.”

Aziraphale finally let his gaze flicker to the floor beside Gabriel’s feet. “I apologize for worrying you, Gabriel. That has never been my intention.”

“No, of course not.” Was that _gentleness_ in Gabriel’s voice? It didn’t seem likely, or even possible.

Archangel Gabriel was many things, but he could never be accused of being _gentle_, especially not to such an underling as Aziraphale.

“How can I show you that I am committed to my work?” Aziraphale ventured at last.

He should’ve known this might be coming. Letting Raphael take them to the privacy of the stars was never a Good idea.

And yet, Aziraphale couldn’t find it in himself to regret it.

_“I love you,”_ Raphael had whispered, voice pulsing like starlight. _“My angel, my gravity, my love. With everything I am, I love you.”_

“It’s not your devotion to your work that has me concerned,” Gabriel said, words cutting through the daze of memory. “It’s your devotion to the Almighty.”

News from the planetbuilders was recently that tectonics had been created. They’d demonstrated it at the staff meeting just a few weeks ago, the way large crusts of planet would sit atop molten rock, occasionally brushing against or shoving around the other crustblocks and causing the very foundations of the planet where the Almighty’s Goodness would live to tremble.

“To stir things up,” one of the planetbuilders had said when someone asked the point of all this. “To give the Good things a chance to enact their Goodness.”

At the time, distracted by the brief, almost accidental, brushes of Raphael’s hand against their own, Aziraphale had missed the way the room soured at the question.

He remembered it now. The souring mood. The echo of the “why” hanging like a sword above their heads, ready to bear down, to strike off. And, most of all, the way it felt to wonder what it would be like for your very foundations to tremble.

This was not like the moment he’d accidentally created Time. That had been a pleasant shift. A moment of falling, yes, of spiraling in toward gravity, but Raphael had been there. His eyes, his smile, his words, had caught Aziraphale, tethered them to his own gravity. Made it safe for Aziraphale to fall.

This … this was a spiral toward nothing.

“My devotion is to the Almighty,” Aziraphale said. His breath was coming too fast, too hard, almost a gasp. “She knows that.”

“Does She, Aziraphale?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

Gabriel’s eyes were dark. All the Archangels had dark eyes. Dark and piercing, even with those on their wings well-hidden. “And the rest of the Hosts. Do they know where your loyalties lie?”

Ice now. Cold and splintered, shooting through every part of Aziraphale’s being. It was another concept invented by the planetbuilders, one that Raphael found delightful and borrowed with thanks for asteroids and comets and all the other Stuff that starbuilders had scattered about the universe.

Aziraphale bowed his head, eyes down, boldness spent. “Of course they do. Why would they even think to question it?”

_Why_. That souring word, that dangerous thought.

Gabriel leaned forward, pressed in. He smelled of electricity, fierce and deadly. Smite pulsed through his words. “Some of the Hosts are questioning a lot more than one lowly angel’s devotion to the Almighty.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The starbuilders, Aziraphale. You know what I’m saying. You’ve spent enough time with them.”

And, terrible as a tectonic shift, Aziraphale _did_ understand. Not just what Gabriel was implying, but what he _wanted_.

What he wanted was impossible.

“No. You … you misunderstand.”

A raised eyebrow. Skeptical. “Do I?”

“Yes. Raphael, he’s as loyal as I am.”

“To the Almighty.”

“Who else?”

“Say it like that, Aziraphale. Tell me he’s as loyal to the Almighty as he ought to be. Tell me that you aren’t the blasphemer I know you are.”

“I…” There was too much, too much bubbling just there, just under the surface. Aziraphale was floating, untethered. Afraid.

“Say it, Aziraphale.”

“I haven’t…”

Wings flared. Eyes opened. Aziraphale cowered under the Archangel’s glare, the full ravaging heat of it. _“Say the words, Aziraphale.”_

Aziraphale had never heard the Almighty Speak. It had been the Metatron who was there when the young angel first opened his eyes, who had guided him from his nest and handed him over to Gabriel for training. It was said that to speak to the Metatron was to speak with the Almighty, but anyone who remembered the Voice of the Almighty knew that wasn’t precisely the case, any more than speaking to any representative was to speak to the person he represented.

This, Gabriel Speaking now in a voice that could not be ignored or circumvented, that echoed like Raphael’s had in the center of that tormenting ring of starbuilders, this was as close, Aziraphale thought, as he would ever get to hearing the Voice of the Almighty. It drilled into his core, throbbed like a second heart, demanded attention. Acquiescence.

Aziraphale didn’t think he could fold tighter, cower more, but somehow, he managed it.

_“Swear your loyalty to the Almighty, Aziraphale, and you will be free to leave.”_

“Gabriel, please, this isn’t—”

** _“Swear. It.”_ **

“I have no loyalty except to the Almighty!”

The words were torn, raw and reluctant, from Aziraphale’s throat, and immediately shame replaced the terror. It was one thing to try to get out of needing to say such a thing — it was an entirely different, infinitely worse, thing to deny so utterly what Raphael meant to him.

For the second time in his existence, Aziraphale’s eyes filled with tears.

This time, Raphael wasn’t there to wipe those tears away with his strong, starwarm hands.

That was Good. It would kill him for Raphael to know what he’d said.

Gabriel’s wingeyes closed. He rolled his shoulders and nestled the feathers back together. His expression was not altogether satisfied, but the smite and electricity, at least, had gone out from it, replaced now with his more usual insincere smirk.

Fire and ice, unable to balance each other out, crawled across Aziraphale’s skin and down into his veins. His voice was weak. “May I be dismissed?”

Gabriel straightened, smoothing down an invisible wrinkle against his chest. “You will report to Michael.”

“M-Michael?”

“Are you questioning me, angel?”

“No! No, of course not.” Aziraphale stood. It took some force to make sure his knees didn’t give out from under him. “I’ll just go and do that now.”

“Good. That’s your job, Aziraphale. Never forget it. You were made to be Good. To Obey.”

“Yes.” Never in their entire existence had Aziraphale felt that so strongly. Angels were meant to Obey. To be loyal to the Almighty alone. To Love, but never to love. “Yes, I understand.”

The door to Gabriel’s room opened and closed. Aziraphale allowed himself a single moment to lean against the wall, allow it to take most of his weight — weight was gravity, too, and when had Heaven ever had its own gravity? — and squeeze his eyes shut.

Deep down in the quiet place inside him, the place where the Voice of the Almighty ought to live, Aziraphale could feel Raphael. He’d caught the spikes of terror and shame that were consuming Aziraphale. He felt them, and he was longing toward Aziraphale, but he was caught in the starbuilders’ workshop.

Aziraphale rubbed at the wetness collecting under his eyes. _Stay._

The Hosts couldn’t properly communicate across the spaces in Heaven, so there was no chance of Raphael actually hearing Aziraphale’s thoughts, but he hoped that maybe, if he could just throw all his thoughts into feelings, Raphael might be able to feel it and understand.

Frustration came back from Raphael. He was well and truly caught in the workshop, unable to extract himself from his work.

_Stay_, Aziraphale thought. _We both have our own duties to attend to. I’ll stop bothering you._

Aziraphale wasn’t sure what Raphael might be understanding from his feelings — he couldn’t even understand it. Too much had happened, too many thoughts had boiled over, and now … and now…

Aziraphale had denied Raphael. All those moments of love shared, words spoken, promises made — Aziraphale had denied them all like they meant nothing to him.

Denied them all because Aziraphale was a coward. Too afraid of the electricity crackling around Gabriel to tell the truth, to claim without fear that the Almighty meant nothing, Heaven meant nothing, if Raphael wasn’t by his side.

The longing and frustration echoing back from Raphael grew almost into desperation, and for a moment, it seemed as though Aziraphale could make out words being carried by the feeling.

_I’m coming. Wait for me._

Aziraphale straightened, pushing away from the wall, smoothing out his robe, wiping saltwater from his face.

Report to Michael.

He could do that. With steps he didn’t allow to sway, he crossed the hall to the Archangel Michael’s room.

*

A sword.

Raphael had never wielded a sword. There was a certain amount of fighting and swordplay knowledge embedded into his Grace, as was standard for all the Hosts, but he’d never actually touched a sword. It was heavier than he’d expected it to be, and disturbingly easy to move it, cutting this way and that as he tested it in hands that knew without instruction how to hold it.

In the next moment, though, his thoughts caught up with his actions, and he paused the motion mid-arc. Other starbuilders were doing the same things — receiving swords from where Lucifer and Boriel handed them out, testing their weights, moving with the weapon with the same grace and surety they had when building a star.

Lucifer glanced up when Raphael hesitated. “What is it, my friend?”

“Swords? I thought we were going to speak to the Almighty.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Why does that require swords?”

“Raphael. My old friend.” Lucifer smiled, and the strangeness that had infected him all this time had no bearing on the glow of his smile.

“Lucifer,” Raphael answered back in the same tone. Warm. Loving. They were starbuilders, made to understand, to create, and to Love.

“Getting in to see the Almighty may require fighting through those who would stand in our way. I expect those at the Head Office might have something to say about all this.”

Raphael understood in a flash of sudden, blinding white. This was not to be a peaceful walk to the Throne, a topic of discussion like at one of those interminable staff meetings, a quiet laying out of their questions and sensible answers received from the Almighty.

This was to be Rebellion.

That was the word that had been lingering around the edges of the workshop for some time, the word that had made Raphael so desperate to try and keep Lucifer’s rantings quiet. The thing Raphael had tried to shield the rest of the Hosts from by allowing Lucifer to speak openly to him, and him alone.

But it seemed that Raphael hadn’t been successful. The word had already spread too far.

“Lucifer!”

He’s already turned back to the next starbuilder in the crowd, handing him a sword and speaking words low in his ear, but he once again looked up when Raphael said his name.

Raphael grabbed his friend by the arm, not caring if he caught a few feathers in the grasp as well, and hauled them both to a quiet place away from the rest of their fellows. He dropped his voice to barely more than a hiss. “Lucifer, you can’t be serious. Tell me you aren’t serious.”

Lucifer met his eyes and didn’t smile.

“No. No, my friend, you’re speaking of … of Rebellion.”

“Yes. Just as I have been since the beginning of Time. That was your Aziraphale who created it, wasn’t it? Did you know that the Almighty refuses to acknowledge that? Claims such a feat for Herself, because She can’t bear the thought of a mere angel being so capable.”

Raphael knew. Oh, he knew, and it burned him up that Head Office, presumably at the whim of the Almighty, wouldn’t acknowledge Aziraphale’s contribution to the universe. As if being a _mere_ _angel_ meant he was Less Than.

Aziraphale wasn’t Less Than anyone.

But now was hardly the time for this. “How do you know what the Almighty has and has not done?”

“Does that truly matter?”

Raphael cast a long glance at the sword he still held, loose, unbearably comfortable, in his hand. “I won’t fight.”

Lucifer smirked. “You will.”

Raphael opened his hand. The sword fell, clattering on the hard ground of the workshop.

He turned and fled.

*

The hallways of Heaven were thick with Hosts.

Aziraphale hadn’t moved from the spot where Michael had placed him, worried that the Archangel had a strategy in mind that moving would destroy — though he doubted Michael had given such thought to the individual placement of a single angel. At least he was in the back of the knot placed somewhere away from the Throne; he didn’t like the way the sword in his hands vibrated with an eagerness he didn’t understand.

Aziraphale didn’t know how to fight. There was a certain innate knowledge woven into his Grace about how to do it, but that was it. _Cut, slice, parry._ It made him sick. Sick at the thought of … of trying to hurt another.

Of another trying to hurt them.

He’d been hurt, earlier, in the starbuilders’ workshop. The press of bodies in the hall beside him rubbed against his kicked sides, his torn feathers.

_Why?_

It had never been Aziraphale’s place to ask questions. It was only ever his place to Obey and Serve. Before Time, he’d always been content with that, that knowledge that he was to Obey, to Serve. To deliver messages from the Host who wished to speak to the Host who needed to hear.

And now?

_Why?_

A shout echoed through the halls. Michael’s voice, piercing, deep like the voices of all the higher Hosts, followed. _“They’re coming. Stand your ground.”_

Aziraphale couldn’t have moved if the hall split open beneath his feet.

_“Under no circumstances are you to give way,”_ Michael continued. _“Those that do will face the same fate as the Rebels.”_

Rebels…

Rebels.

The word echoed longer even than Michael’s voice could’ve done. It was a new word, one Aziraphale hadn’t heard before, but he knew without needing it to be explained what it meant.

As if his stomach wasn’t churning already.

_Raphael._ Aziraphale reached out with every ounce of his Grace, struggling to find Raphael in the mess of Hosts shimmering around him. _Raphael, where are you?_

Not in the starbuilders’ workshop anymore. The workshops had all been emptied immediately upon the news that Lucifer’s starbuilders had all dropped their work and were coming toward the Throne.

_Lucifer’s starbuilders. Rebels._

But Raphael couldn’t be among them. Raphael was no Rebel. He asked questions sometimes, but that was part of a starbuilder’s nature. The need to understand was a core feature of what made someone fit for building stars. It was why Aziraphale would never be a starbuilder, and why Raphael was the best of them.

Desiring to understand didn’t make someone a Rebel. It couldn’t.

There were more shouts now, and the sudden metallic sound of sword striking sword.

Aziraphale trembled. The sword in his hands lifted of its own accord, eager. Waiting.

_Raphael, please! Where are you?_

He saw Lucifer first. The Morning Star was blazing. Fire skipped across his skin, his hair, his feathers. Innumerable eyes smeared tongues of flame across all six wings. His heads, usually hidden, burned.

Even the Powers and Principalities, the soldiers scattered amongst the planetbuilders and messengers in the hallway, flinched. A blazing Seraph was nothing to take lightly.

Lucifer stopped several paces away from the first point of the Hosts’ swords. He lifted a hand, and those following behind him stopped as well. He was, Aziraphale noticed wildly, the only one who appeared to be unarmed.

The Hosts shimmered again, and Michael, helmeted, with a sword in each of her hands, stepped forward of the line, a slight motion into the uncertain space between the two groups. She spoke quietly, but her voice crackled. “Lucifer.”

“Michael,” Lucifer answered in the same tone.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“We wish to speak to the Almighty.”

“Not like that, you won’t.”

The fire flared. Aziraphale flinched and thought that a few others around them did, too. “I am as She made me. Now I wish to know why.”

_Why._

That was the eternal question.

_Raphael. _Aziraphale was nearly sobbing, fighting to keep the sound down, to keep from giving himself away to those around him._ Please. I’m afraid._

Those who flinched would receive the same fate as the Rebels.

Only Rebels ever thought to ask _why._

Aziraphale was not a Rebel. Neither was Raphael. He couldn’t be. He couldn’t.

_Where are you? Please! I’m so afraid, and they’re coming…_

*

Raphael ran.

The Hosts didn’t run. They walked or flew or transported themselves across space with a thought.

But Raphael couldn’t think clearly enough to make the necessary adjustments to his shape and form in order to do any of those things.

And when the anxiety he felt from Aziraphale turned to fear, and then to terror, Raphael could only think one thing:

_Get to him._

And then:

_Get him out._

His body responded to those thoughts without him needing to command it.

And so Raphael ran, pulled forward by the terror he could feel radiating in tides and oceans from his angel.

The hallways were crowded with the shifting, uncertain forms of what must be every individual of the Heavenly Hosts. He couldn’t remember a time when something like that — a full gathering of the Hosts — had ever happened.

He fought against the stagger trying to trip up his steps.

And then he saw it. Lucifer, the Morning Star, his oldest friend, blazing down the ends of Archangel Michael’s swords. His fellow starbuilders, his _friends_, wielding swords at their own.

And Aziraphale, just to the left of the main knot, lifting a weapon his gentle hands were never meant to hold as Lucifer nodded to his followers, and the Rebellion began.

*

The first sword to move was Michael’s; she jabbed forward, a feign toward Lucifer’s burning upper wings. Not a serious gesture, but it was enough.

The Hosts on both sides gave a great yell, and then the Rebels — _Rebels, Rebels _— lunged across the few open strides between them.

Aziraphale couldn’t stop his tears now. This wasn’t how things were Supposed To Be. He knew better than to question, but he knew just as surely that this wasn’t supposed to happen.

_Rebels._

The Hosts didn’t rebel. That wasn’t what they were meant for. That wasn’t what they did.

A Rebel rushed toward them. Aziraphale recognized the face as the starbuilder who’d struck him in the workshop. Boriel.

He grinned, exposing teeth, as he rushed at Aziraphale, sword raised. There was something unhinged, unholy, about his grin. He didn’t even seem to be seeing what he was doing.

He swung. Aziraphale ducked. The blade nicked the tip of one feather.

Boriel staggered for just a moment, but it was long enough for Aziraphale to recover his own balance and lift his sword in defense.

Boriel turned, swinging again, and this time Aziraphale caught the motion with the broad side of his sword. The holy metals screamed against each other.

“Boriel,” Aziraphale tried, “what are you doing?”

“Don’t talk to me, little angel,” Boriel spat. “You’re not worthy to lick my hems.”

Another swing, another block. This time, Aziraphale only barely caught the raging sword, and it cut across the angel’s fist. Golden ichor oozed up across his knuckles.

Boriel laughed at the sight, and his laugh was as terrible as the crash of sword against sword. “So, the little angel can bleed.”

“Boriel, please. I don’t want to fight.”

“And yet, here you are, a sword in your hand. Did the Head Office command it? Did you submit to their orders like the Good little pet you are?”

The next flash of sword knocked Aziraphale’s out of his hands. Without breaking his arc, Boriel smashed the hilt of his sword against his temple.

For a moment, there was only pain and searing white light. A Voice, laughing, reflecting the pain back and back and back again.

_“Where’s your Raphael now?”_

And then another Voice, as familiar to Aziraphale as his own, but strange, too, for Aziraphale had never heard it filled with such rage.

_“I’m here.”_

Boriel’s laugh cut off into a scream, and then silence.

Aziraphale opened one eye. The light hadn’t dimmed; the pain was still searing and terrible.

But that was what happened when a _mere angel_ dared to stare directly into the full burning glory of a furious Seraph.

*

Raphael didn’t dare touch Aziraphale, not yet. He was out of all control, flaming and trembling, the smite tingling at the tips of his fingers and the center of his Grace. One brush of his hand might send Aziraphale into the oblivion that he’d just condemned Boriel to.

Instead, he crouched as near to his angel as he dared and tried to speak gently, without the terrifying echo that shook through his throat. “Aziraphale? It’s all right now. I’m here, love. I’m here.”

“Raphael?”

There was such fear and pain in his voice that the rage surged again. Raphael ground his teeth together and forced it down.

Aziraphale reached out a hand to him, and he took it, carefully, stroking his angel’s fingers without any pressure. The Touch eased some of the fury burning inside him.

Aziraphale was all right. Safe. With him.

“Can you stand?”

“I…” Aziraphale hesitated, winced, and sat up, free hand pressed gently to the place where Boriel had struck him. “I think so.”

Raphael got to his feet and helped Aziraphale the rest of the way up. Aziraphale swayed; Raphael wrapped his arms and wings tight around his angel, taking on most of his weight.

“It’s all right, love,” he murmured, urging them both away from the knots of fighting, the swords and shouts still ringing through the hallways. “It’ll be all right now. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Aziraphale trembled and curled his fingers into fists around the cloth of Raphael’s robe. “What are we going to do?”

“We’ll leave. Find someplace safe until the Rebellion dies down. Lucifer—” he swallowed down the lump that wanted to rise in his throat at the thought of his friend “—this won’t last forever.”

It couldn’t. Lucifer would see reason. The Almighty would start Speaking to them again. It couldn’t be forever.

And until then, until things went back to the way they were Supposed To Be, Raphael would not leave Aziraphale’s side.

The angel let out a long, slow breath, and the tension in his fingers quieted. They still clung to Raphael’s robe, but without the fierce desperation, the fear of being separated, they’d had a moment before.

“I’m here,” Raphael repeated anyway, because it felt Good to say it aloud. He ran his fingers through the soft cloud of Aziraphale’s curls, felt at the wound made by Boriel's sword, and healed the crack in the bone. “I’m here. I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”

“Raphael…”

“I know,” he agreed when Aziraphale trailed off without finishing the thought. “I know, love.”

They made it to the edge of the hallways, the edge of Heaven proper before the universe opened up into the vast empty spaces where stars and planets were hung, Raphael occasionally having to push away a Host who tried to come at them with weapons drawn. He wouldn’t smite them, despite the fury that flared up with each encounter. Not with Aziraphale so close and so frightened. Not when a single misplaced touch might send his angel into utter oblivion.

Raphael controlled himself even when the swords came at them, when they slashed at his wings as though trying to get to the angel he held protected behind them.

It wasn’t particularly hard to push the attackers away. They were all angels, messengers like Aziraphale, trembling and afraid and easy enough to intimidate with little more than a staring pair of wings.

The Powers and Principalities, the soldiers of Heaven, had already moved to where the battle still raged, somewhere behind them.

He noticed how all of them stayed clear of the edge.

“Almost there,” he whispered, and Aziraphale seemed to crumple slightly with relief.

And just as he was spreading his wings and preparing to take them both away from the horror of Lucifer’s Rebellion, a Voice pulled Aziraphale’s feet to a sudden stop.

_“Well done, Aziraphale. Now finish this Rebel.”_

*

Aziraphale tightened his grip on Raphael’s robe, clinging to the courage that leaked like water from his chest at the sound of Archangel Gabriel’s order.

Raphael had gone still, his arms tight around Aziraphale’s waist, his wings, those glorious soft wings, tense and half-raised in preparation for flight.

Rebel.

_Not Raphael. Not ever._

He was a Rebel. Part of the Rebellion against Heaven. Gabriel Said so.

_No. No, he’s lying. He’s Lying!_

“Aziraphale.”

Gabriel again, though no longer Speaking with a Voice, but merely talking as if to a peer.

_Since when did Gabriel start considering his underlings peers?_

Aziraphale turned in Raphael’s arms. Still clinging, still terrified that if his fingers moved at all, Raphael would break free and leave him, but at least he could meet Gabriel’s eyes through the spaces between Raphael’s feathers.

Gabriel caught the movement and smiled. It was a strange smile, warm and familiar and Loving. The sort of smile Hosts were Supposed to give each other. The sort of smile Gabriel never gave away for free.

“I will admit, I doubted you,” Gabriel continued, as if this wasn’t a strange situation. “When Michael recommended that you would be useful, I objected. Laid out all the reasons I found you incompetent.

“And now, look at me. Forced to take back my opinion. You’ve done well, Aziraphale.”

Another Loving smile. Aziraphale’s insides twisted. Before Time began, he would’ve done anything to see that smile on Gabriel’s face. That proof that he was seen, accepted, appreciated.

Loved.

Raphael still hadn’t moved. Every muscle seemed to have been carved from ice. Only the faint pulse of ichor through his veins proved that he was still alive.

Gabriel was silent. Aziraphale’s fingers tightened again.

“I don’t understand,” Aziraphale admitted at last. “What have I done?”

That Loving smile. It was cruel how it shot through all Aziraphale’s nagging uncertainty and exquisite terror in a way that not even Raphael’s could. How it warmed a part he didn’t even know until this moment was cold and lonely.

It was cruel how it made Aziraphale long for it the way he used to, before, as if nothing that had happened since Time began had any meaning.

_Rebel._

Aziraphale was no Rebel.

But perhaps Raphael was.

“The battle is won, my friend. The Rebels have Fallen.”

It was the first time anyone had used that word with its capital letter, but Aziraphale knew about gravity, and he knew what Gabriel meant.

A shudder raced down his spine. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No. It’s … it’s too cruel.”

_Too cruel. Like the Archangel’s smile. Like the Almighty’s Silence._

_Like the Rebellion itself._

Gabriel stepped forward, then hesitated, uncertain gaze flashing toward the icy sculpture of Raphael still halfway between them, wings and arms carved protectively around Aziraphale.

“It’s already done, Aziraphale,” he said. Gently. Lovingly.

_Too cruel._

“This is the punishment for the Rebellion. All Rebels are to Fall.”

Aziraphale gasped. The noise caught in his throat and morphed into a sob.

Raphael moved at last. For an instant, barely longer than a heartbeat, his arms tightened, squeezing Aziraphale so powerfully to his side that he wondered if a bone might crack. Then, in the next instant, the shelter of arms and wings vanished from around him, and Raphael stepped forward so he was directly between Gabriel and Aziraphale. He held his wings low and meek, his head bent, and he spoke so quietly Aziraphale had to strain to hear.

“Aziraphale is no Rebel. Please. He knew nothing of Lucifer or his plans for Rebellion.”

“I know,” Gabriel said, not unkindly. “But I’m afraid the loyalty of this angel is in question.”

“No.” The word tore from Aziraphale’s throat. It burned like acid as it spilled out. “No, please. I’ve told you, my loyalty is to the Almighty.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Words are not enough. Your actions speak out against you.”

Another sob wrecked the inside of their throat. “No. Please. I don’t want to Fall.”

“Then you will have to prove your loyalty to Heaven.”

“Anything. Please.”

“Very well.” Gabriel straightened. Aziraphale hadn’t noticed how he’d started to tilt in toward them as though he really meant every word he said.

A sword materialized in Aziraphale’s hand. The same one, perhaps, as had been knocked free of his grip by Boriel’s strike.

Gabriel Spoke._ “Seraph Raphael, starbuilder, for Rebelling against the Kingdom of Heaven and the Almighty Herself, you are sentenced to Fall.”_

<strike></strike>*

The words took a moment to sink in. Aziraphale hadn’t known what to expect, what he would have to do to prove his loyalty to the Almighty, but it wasn’t this.

It wasn’t this. It couldn’t be.

_“Your sentence is to be carried out immediately. Angel Aziraphale, you are to be the Sword of the Almighty.”_

No.

No, no, nonono.

Raphael turned. His face was blank, his amber eyes empty of the fire that lived in them.

Aziraphale tried to drop the sword, but his fingers were as tight around the hilt as they’d previously been at Raphael’s collar. Traitorous, cruel fingers that wanted only for something to hold onto.

How could it not matter to them if that thing was Raphael’s hands or a damning sword?

“Gabriel! No, not… Please, anything but this! I’ll do anything else — clean the River of Life for the rest of eternity, scrub the streets of gold, prop up the Almighty’s feet when She sits on Her Throne. Please. Anything, anything but this.”

“Prove your loyalty, Aziraphale,” was the only answer Gabriel gave.

Raphael had come back to Aziraphale’s side. One hand stroked the angel’s cheek. “It’s all right, Aziraphale.”

“No! No, it’s not!”

Raphael cupped Aziraphale’s jaw in both hands now. He dropped his face so their foreheads touched. “You can’t Fall.”

“Neither can you!”

“Shh. It’s all right, love. It’ll be all right. Just…” Raphael slammed his eyes shut, brows scrunched into a grimace. “Just do it quickly.”

“I won’t.” There was no strength left in Aziraphale’s voice — all of his effort was going toward trying to open his traitorous fingers, drop that terrible sword. “I can’t.”

“I’ve been condemned, angel. I will Fall no matter what you do. But your fate is not yet decided. Please, please, if you love me at all, don’t Fall. I couldn’t bear it.”

Aziraphale closed their eyes. Tears streamed from under his eyelids. “It’s too cruel.”

“I know, love.”

“I love you. I’ll always love you. With everything I have in me, for the rest of Eternity.”

“My angel.” The words were almost inaudible, caught behind the curl of a sob. “My gravity. My love. I’ll always come for you. For as long as you’ll wait for me, I’ll come for you.”

Aziraphale breathed out. Opened his eyes. Lifted the sword. “I’ll wait forever.”

Aziraphale held Raphael’s eyes as he pressed the sword into that beloved heart. Though everything cried out for him to look away, to hide his fear and shame and heartbreak, it seemed only Right that Aziraphale watch as those traitorous hands shoved holy metal into holier flesh. As Raphael gave a sharp little gasp of pain and staggered back. As his heel clipped the edge of Heaven, gravity snatched at him, and he plummeted.

Aziraphale watched as Raphael’s wings instinctively flared in an effort to catch him. Saw the moment he realized that his wings didn’t work. With his angelic eyesight, he could see the unholy fire burn across Raphael’s beautiful feathers, leaving nothing but bleeding skin and empty bones behind.

This was his punishment — to watch, missing nothing, as Raphael Fell.


	2. Orbit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. The first chapter was written in a fugue state while I was on vacation; now, back to work and somewhat distracted from said fugue state, writing took much longer.
> 
> And despite my every intention for it to be a post-canon getting-together, this chapter took a detour in 1941, because of-bloody-course it did...
> 
> Comments and kudos are treasured forever. <3

Aziraphale knew. Of course he did. Blackened feathers, slitted pupils, and the faint wafts of smoke coming from where his Grace used to shine didn’t change his ability to _recognize_ him.

But Gabriel’s words, those terrible barbs he’d sent through the room on the first morning Aziraphale was able to pull himself from the ground and attend the staff meeting, still rang in his head. As, he suspected, Gabriel meant them to.

_“They’re gone. The Fallen are not who they used to be. Do not expect them to remember you. They will not.”_

Aziraphale didn’t think it was only his imagination that Gabriel’s eyes flashed toward him in that moment.

_“Falling steals their memories. If anything remains of who they were, it will be twisted and corrupt. Evil. Don’t waste your time trying to remind them. They will not remember.”_

The Rebellion had changed everything.

Aziraphale couldn’t stand Heaven anymore. The place that had once been suffused with Love and light had turned cold and sterile. Still brightly-lit, but the light hurt rather than warmed. The workshops, once hubs of activity, of creation, of joy, had gone silent. Head Office said it was because creation was finished, and everyone pretended to believe them.

To not would be to join the Rebels.

So when Michael and Gabriel came to him and said that he’d been promoted to Principality for his actions in the Rebellion, and they had a new job for him, on that rocky little planet around Sol, Aziraphale accepted the assignment with … well, not joy — that had been lost — but at least relief.

The Eastern Gate of Eden. It was, he knew, a trivial assignment, probably meant more to get Aziraphale out of their hair — apparently, there’d been complaints about the newly-promoted Principality being rather a drag on the fake cheer everyone insisted on maintaining — but at least it got him away from the sterile white halls and too-constant press of memories.

And Eden was lovely. Warm and green and fresh, everything that Heaven wasn’t anymore. The humans were lovely, too. Curious, innocent, delighted by everything around them, and always eager to hear Aziraphale’s stories.

He told them about stars. About matter and gravity, fusion and fire. And once, when he and Eve were strolling together along the eastern wall of the garden, he even dared to point out one star in particular.

“It looks like one,” he said as Eve traced the line of his arm toward the star he was directing her to, “but that’s just because we’re too far away to see that it’s actually two. Two stars, swirling around each other in a perfect dance. Caught in each other’s gravity.”

He hoped she couldn’t hear the way his voice broke over the words.

And then, suddenly, everything went wrong. Again.

One bite. One moment of doubt, of disobedience. Of wondering what the Almighty was up to.

That’s all it took. That’s all it had ever taken.

Aziraphale couldn’t catch his breath. There was a demon at his side, wondering almost idly what was so wrong about knowing the difference between good and evil, and Aziraphale couldn’t breathe.

He knew him.

He knew that smile, sharp and sudden, like a star blazing to life. He knew those fiery curls, those strong, slender fingers, that lovely voice with its casual drawl.

The last time he’d seen any of those things, it had been when he’d Fallen. Feathers burning away and a sword buried into his heart.

A sword Aziraphale had put there with his own hands. His own traitorous, cowardly fingers.

Gabriel’s Voice echoed in his head. _They’re gone. They will not remember you._

But surely, surely, if any of the Fallen remembered who they were, it would be…

“Crawly,” the demon supplied.

Aziraphale didn’t think his heart could’ve sunk any lower than it already was, but somehow, it managed it.

_They’re gone. They don’t remember._

*

For a while, it was painful, seeing the demon. Too many memories laid over that beloved face that Aziraphale knew he could never reference, that the demon couldn’t remember. Every moment he spent under those watchful yellow eyes — they never ceased to be watchful, to draw more out of the angel than he was perhaps comfortable with allowing — he could feel desire raging inside him.

The desire to touch, to hold, like they’d done in Heaven. To speak of what had happened.

And, most of all, to apologize.

To sink to his knees, cling to the bottom of the other’s robe, and beg for forgiveness.

The memory of their last moments in Heaven, his own sword, guided by his own hands, piercing his lover’s heart — watching him Fall — watching him _burn_ — it never left him. It caught at and squeezed his thoughts. It tore him open and gnashed its way through him.

But Aziraphale said nothing. The demon — he wasn’t Raphael anymore, he knew that, he had to accept that — wouldn’t remember. Would probably strike him down if he ever put himself into such a vulnerable position.

Time marched on.

And with Time came some semblance of healing. New memories built up to replace the old ones. Chance run-ins every few decades with the demon Crawly — Crowley, as he changed it to around Golgotha — became less and less strained, more and more friendly, as they found a new rhythm to their acquaintance.

It wasn’t what they’d had Before, but it was something that filled the hole that still throbbed, unreachable, in the center of Aziraphale’s chest, and the angel was glad of it.

The Arrangement brought their chance run-ins to an end and replaced it with something more deliberate, more frequent. They began to talk, at first about work, the temptations and blessing they were meant to bestow on this funny planet with its funny people, and soon those conversations turned to the people themselves, and then it wasn’t long until they barely talked about work at all except as needed by the Arrangement.

And sometimes, sometimes, Aziraphale would swear that Crowley’s eyes would linger on him the way they used to, with a sort of fondness — he didn’t dare use the word _love_, even to himself — that demons weren’t supposed to be able to feel.

It made Aziraphale wonder. He tried not to, because the wonder always brought an inkling of hope, and the hope was always the most painful thing.

_Could he…? Might he…?_

No.

_But what if…?_

No.

He tamped down on the thoughts with a viciousness that was reserved only for this, and, eventually, slowly, even those questions stopped bothering him.

When they returned, they returned with a vengeance.

*

“Lift home?”

He said it so easily and walked away as if he couldn’t possibly care whether or not Aziraphale followed. But even his casual drawl and even more casual swagger couldn’t disguise the bare facts of the moment.

Crowley had come for Aziraphale.

He’d come for him, inside a church, hopping painfully from foot to foot on the consecrated ground, intervening with a miracle big enough to surely need the justifying paperwork (in triplicate, because Heaven and Hell had alarmingly-similar paperwork requirements), after 79 years of silence and the worst disagreement they’d had since … well, since ever.

And then, as if that weren’t enough, Crowley had saved the books. Somehow, he’d known that Aziraphale would be too distracted in the moment to protect the satchel, and he’d performed that miracle himself.

There was nothing, nothing, that could justify that.

Nothing except that Crowley had known Aziraphale would forget, and would be devastated by it the moment he remembered again.

All the other times Crowley had intervened before to get Aziraphale out of a sticky situation — and there’d been an embarrassing number of them over the last six millennia; Aziraphale had something of a knack for getting himself into _situations_ with the humans he could never find it in himself to stop trusting, completely and implicitly — all the other times Aziraphale had found himself on the brink of discorporation and seen Crowley swooping in at the last moment to save him, those could all be explained by fortuitous timing or pure coincidence. Perhaps even by the understanding of the Arrangement.

_Lend a hand when needed._ Crowley had been strangely insistent about that particular bit of their mutual partnership. As if he knew he might someday need an excuse for making such gestures…

But this … this was something different. Aziraphale could feel it. Something had _changed._ It wasn’t like in France or Russia or Turkey, where Crowley happened to be passing through or on assignment and stumbled across Aziraphale in some ridiculous situation. This was — he searched for the word, thoughts scrambling for something to describe to himself what it was that felt different.

This was _deliberate._

_Crowley had come for him._

And then he’d saved the books.

“Oi, angel!”

Aziraphale glanced up, forcing his eyes to focus, and found Crowley smirking at him from beside a fancy black car.

“Do you want a lift home?”

Barely cognizant of the movement, Aziraphale stumbled across the rubble of the church toward the car. Crowley smirked at him again and opened the passenger-side door; he sat, clutching the bag of books to his chest like they were armor against his racing thoughts.

It was a nice car. Aziraphale didn’t care much for cars — they moved too fast for him and had a bad habit of getting into accidents that could injure people or worse — but he certainly didn’t miss the way Crowley’s fingers caressed the hood as he moved around to the driver’s side. The gentleness in those fingers, the slight relaxation in the lines of Crowley’s face as his hand slid across the sleek black metal, spoke louder than words of the demon’s affection for this strange human invention.

Aziraphale shivered and clung a little tighter to his books. He knew how it would feel for those strong, slender fingers to touch something so gently, as if they were afraid of breaking it. How, in another moment, an equally-gentle smile might break over that face, warm and bright as a star, and feathers—

_No,_ his thoughts screamed. _Stop. That’s dangerous. He doesn’t remember. He can’t._

But Crowley had come for him…

The driver’s side door opened, and the demon folded himself into the seat. “All right there, angel?”

Aziraphale couldn’t speak. He nodded instead.

“Right. Bookshop?”

Another nod.

Crowley spun the wheel of the car and took off down the road at a terrifying speed, paying no heed to the rubble littering the roads.

The fear, at least, was something familiar, a sensation he knew what to do with. The hand not clutching the bag handle scrabbled for something else to hold onto, settling after a moment for the side of the leather seat beneath him.

Crowley noticed — of course he did, damn him — and his smirk widened.

At least Aziraphale was able to refurbish himself with words. “What was the point of saving me from discorporation if you’re only going to do it yourself now?”

“I’m not going to discorporate you.”

“Well, your driving might.”

Crowley chuckled, enjoying himself a bit too much for Aziraphale’s taste. “Don’t you trust me?”

It was a teasing question meant to goad, and perhaps at any other moment, Aziraphale might’ve risen to the bait, engaged with the banter. Let Crowley tease him, if for no other reason than to distract him from the terrible ordeal of being in the car.

But he couldn’t. Not now, not with all these thoughts, ones he’d thought he’d finally managed to suppress for good hundreds of years ago, swirling around in his head.

“Yes.”

It slipped out. Quiet but sure.

_You came for me. Just as you’ve always done. Just as you promised you always would do._

At least he was able to clamp down on this part.

_Don’t say it. He doesn’t remember._

But now Crowley was _looking_ at him. He could feel the weight of the other’s gaze even from behind those dark sunglasses. Aziraphale tried to school his expression into something at least nearing nonchalance, but he knew it was a lost cause. Crowley knew him better than that.

The car was silent, the only sound coming from the swish of tires skidding around the road, dodging Blitz rubble, and the never-ending echo of sirens in the air.

Aziraphale was grateful when they pulled up to the bookshop, grateful to see his home, his sanctuary, still in one piece. No bombs were meant to fall her tonight, and Aziraphale had taken some measures to ensure the safety of the whole block against German bombs regardless, but the thought always lingered in the back of his head when he was away, that he might come home to nothing but a pile of rubble and destroyed books. His life’s work, his beloved collection of priceless books and scrolls and manuscripts destroyed like so much else around the city.

Destroyed like the books he still clutched to his chest might’ve been, if only Crowley hadn’t protected them.

No. He couldn’t think about that anymore. He couldn’t let himself wonder what it all meant.

Because, if it didn’t mean what he hoped it might, if he ever dared to say aloud the things he held in his heart only to discover Crowley didn’t want it, well … that would destroy him.

He’d lost him once. He couldn’t survive it again.

So Aziraphale pushed down everything he yearned to say and smiled politely instead. “Thank you, my dear.”

It wasn’t enough. But it was all he could do.

Crowley shrugged. “I know you don’t like the paperwork.”

“It’s not—” Aziraphale began, but then bit back the rest of the words pressing at his throat, desperate for escape. He cleared his throat of them and tried again, a bit more tempered. “Would you like to come in? I’ve got a lovely ’33 Chateau Lafite in the back…”

He hoped he didn’t sound like he was begging. It would hardly do to beg.

He shouldn’t even be asking. But he wasn’t quite ready to let Crowley go. Not just yet. Not after 79 years of not seeing him. Not after how they ended things the last time.

_Not after he’d come for him._

“Well.” Crowley tossed him one of those enigmatic grins. “I’ve got, y’know. Things. To do. Wiles to wile.”

“Well, then, you definitely should come in. I can’t have you spreading your wiles on my block.”

_Please. Don’t go. Not just yet._

That would definitely be begging. He held his tongue.

The grin widened, and now one of Crowley’s eyebrows lifted above the edge of his lenses. “Are you _tempting_ me, angel?”

“I believe the correct word would be _thwarting.”_

Crowley snorted. “Right.” He turned off the engine and opened his door, and for a moment, Aziraphale considered asking him what he was doing, before he realized that he was, in fact, accepting the invitation for a drink.

Aziraphale scrambled out of the car and rushed to unlock the bookshop door. He’d drawn the blackout curtains over his windows before leaving for the church, but he double-checked them before lighting the small oil lamp he kept on his desk.

He turned when he heard Crowley shuffling in behind him. He was still stepping gingerly, a frown wincing across his face with each shift in weight.

“Oh, your poor feet!”

Crowley dropped onto the couch pushed against the far wall. The frown eased a little as he sat. “’S nothing. Just pour the wine.”

Aziraphale did, fetching the bottle and two glasses and pouring them both a generous glass, but he wasn’t ready to let it go. “Crowley—”

Crowley tried the wine and flicked him a pleased sort of grin. “How’s business, then? Shop’s looking, y’know. Dusty. Full of books.”

“At least let me look at them.”

“It’s fine. Really. They’ll heal.”

“But they’re … oh…” His words faltered for a moment as he realized the true extent of what Crowley had done. “Holy burns. Crowley, they’ll eat you up!”

“Eh. My shoes took the worst of it.”

“Please, my dear. At least let me see.”

Crowley scowled, but then downed the entirety of his glass in one swallow and sighed. “All right. But top me off first.”

Glasses refilled — Aziraphale had the sudden urge to follow Crowley’s lead and polish off his first as quickly as he could — the angel sank to the floor by the demon’s feet and reached out to touch one ankle through the pressed suit pants. He tried not to notice how his hands were shaking.

They hadn’t touched since…

Heaven. The War. His fingers as tight around the hilt of a sword as they’d been around the other angel’s collar. Traitorous fingers. A whispered promise.

_I’ll always come for you._

_And you did. You did. Did you even know it? How could you have forgotten?_

_I never forgot. I was supposed to. But how can a planet forget the gravity of its star? How can the stars forget their dance?_

Crowley was still, his knuckles almost white around the stem of his glass, as Aziraphale took his foot in one hand and tilted it so he could see the bottom.

“Oh,” Aziraphale breathed.

The shoes were leather, obviously expensive — no surprise; Crowley liked fine things, tailored clothes and fast cars, and with the rationing of leather, probably not at all easy to come by — and completely ruined, blackened and pocked with burns, one of which was still smoking faintly in the dim oil lamp. The sight turned Aziraphale’s stomach, though more with the thought of what Crowley’s skin would look like than the unfortunate waste of shoes.

He took off the shoe, peeled off the thin gray sock, himself, since Crowley was too frozen to help with the process.

And gasped again to see the blackened, smoking burns continue on the soles of Crowley’s foot, eating slowly through the demon’s skin. Spreading inexorably

“That bad, huh?”

Aziraphale tore his eyes off the terrible sight to find Crowley smirking down at him.

His breath caught in his throat, and he realized a moment too late that the reason everything around him was suddenly wavering was because there were tears blurring his vision.

“Hey, hey, c’mon, angel, there’s no need to cry. I’m fine, I swear.”

“You shouldn’t have…”

“Don’t be silly. Like I’m going to let a bunch of half-witted Nazi spies discorporate you over a couple old books.”

“That’s not … I mean … you…” He wasn’t sure what he was hoping to say and flushed when he realized that he was well on his way to babbling. He dropped his eyes back to Crowley’s burned foot and pressed his fingers to the skin. Warmth glowed through his palms, and the edges of the burns stopped creeping beyond the edges of their actual wounds. He was afraid to do more than that, afraid that too much holy healing would do more damage than good to the demon’s already-injured feet. But he was able to pull the holiness of the burns out, sucking it into himself where it wouldn’t do any harm, and the char shifted into blisters, still angry and painful to look at, but something that Crowley should be able to heal from.

There was no real need for him to look at the other foot — his healing miracle had pulled all the holiness out of both, and he knew the other foot would be in the same condition as this one — but Aziraphale slipped off the shoe and sock anyway, because he had to be sure.

The acute pain in Crowley’s frown had softened some when Aziraphale looked back up at him.

“Better?”

“Much.”

“You should be able to heal them now. I would’ve, but I’m not sure my healing miracles would actually work on you. I think the shoes are ruined, though—”

“’S fine, angel. Thanks.”

Aziraphale wrung his hands, a nervous tick he’d picked up from humans at about the time of the Flood. He looked up again to find that Crowley had removed his sunglasses and was leaning on his elbows toward him, his expression strangely earnest. “I’m fine, angel. Promise.”

And then Aziraphale couldn’t hold it in anymore. A tear spilled over his lashes and crept down his cheek, leaving a trail of ice behind it. The words spilled out just as uncontrollably. Quiet, barely more than a word-shaped breath. “You came for me.”

Crowley reached out, and with the pad of his thumb, wiped the tear off Aziraphale’s cheek. “Of course I did,” he whispered back, just as quietly. “I promised, and you were waiting.”

*

It was much later when Aziraphale pulled away, just enough to reclaim the use of his lips. “They named it, you know. Our stars.”

“That’s one thing humans are good at, naming things.”

Aziraphale smiled.

“Alright, then. What did they name it?”

“Alpha Centauri.”


End file.
